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196 @lemmy.blahaj.zone
SoleInvictus @lemmy.blahaj.zone

Looks like we started a community! Now we need feedback and mods.

I'm kinda regretting not naming it oneninesix, but here we are. I guess I love letters.

To anyone wondering what's up, I did this on my phone while out in the "big city", so I'm still waiting to get home to do anything serious. I have a few ~~suckers really nice people who volunteered for modding along with me. Anyone else who is interested, drop me a line. I'll be picking mods when I get home in a few hours. Sorry for the wait and I'll do my best to put out any fires in the meantime. I didn't think this would take off!~~

For those wondering, here's my take on moderating the place.

  1. Moderation is to facilitate an experience for its users in line with the goals of the community and the instance. It's not to push a personal agenda, give you a bigger hammer in debates, set up a digital fiefdom, etc. You certainly can and should include your mod experience on your dating profile, though. Unilateral decisions are not cool except in a few situations, like if 100% of your userbase is usurped by literal Nazis.
  2. 196 exists to be a place where you post something (often but not always something goofy) when you visit. I know not everyone does and that's fine - I still love you. These things can't be offensive or hurtful, though, especially not intentionally so. Unintentional vs intentional I believe is a HUGE distinction and needs to be considered when moderating.
  3. LBJ LBZ exists as an inclusive, (relatively) judgment-free zone for gender-diverse folks. I intend for us to uphold that here. I say relatively judgment free because there will be people looking to start shit and mods and admins are going to have to judge their actions, but only their actions.

If you wanna be my modder, you gotta get with my bullet points...or argue persuasively why I should amend them (but that part doesn't fit the tune).The three big things I'm looking for otherwise are diverse viewpoints, if you can remain reasonably impartial, and if you can say you're sorry. The last is huge for me. As a mod, you're going to mess up. I used to mod on Reddit and I certainly did! I find it's important for maintaining the community's respect to be able to admit when you made a bad call and what you'll do to avoid it in the future.

@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone, pointers would be welcome as I think you do a great job.

Community feedback is encouraged and welcome, just be aware I'll be a little slow to respond for a bit.

PS: wow, I really DO love letters!

Edit: Corrected point three, damn autocorrect! Believe it or not, we're not an inclusive community in LBJ's corpse.

Update 20/1/25: We're replete with mods for now! Thank you all who reached out. I'll start pulling these stickies as they get irrelevant, I'm just a full disclosure kind of person so I want people to know what is/has been going on.

97 comments

  • One rule I think might be a good idea is that mods aren't allowed to moderate their own posts/comment chains. Not that it's really been an issue on 196 in the past afaik, but there are some communities where the mods will get into an argument with another user and then remove comments for incivility or a similar rule which obviously has massive potential for abuse. Assuming there are enough mods where it's not an issue to do so (which seems very likely based on the number of people interested in moderating) preventing situations like that entirely seems beneficial.

  • if i have any feedback then i would say that we need some proper rules in place, yeah we can just default to the instance rules but i think having some solid set of rules for moderators and users alike to follow would be a good idea. if you need help modding im interested.

  • Sorry, but I have to withdraw my offer. I am currently struggling with mental health and can't handle any more toxicity or drama.

    The last few days have shown me that stuff like this is not good for me at all.

    So, good luck and happy rules.

    Hello! It's me, Roflmasterbigpimp! The lovable rascal from communities like !bubatzgartenclub@lemmy.world and, since yesterday, !196@lemmy.world.

    And to some degree even !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone for a whopping two days, until feddit.de (and therefore my account) died.

    Even though I have barely done any moderation at all over at !196@lemmy.blahaj.zone, I still want to help out and perhaps sort things out further. I tried to do my best on the .world 196. I encourage you to check my comment history about this topic and form your own opinion about me.

    I can 100% understand if you decline my offer, but I really like this community and want to make this work.

    Furthermore, I would advise adding a rule along the lines of "All decisions affecting the community and its members as a whole must be backed by a public vote." This is something that could have prevented this whole disaster in the first place.

    • This is part of the deal you make when joining a community with active mods, admins, and rules. Not everything is up for debate. I know firsthand that this can be quite frustrating sometimes, but we can’t act like everything else has always been subject to election up to this point. It simply was not.

      https://lemmy.world/comment/14556651

      Not sure that really shows you under the best light

      • Furthermore, I would advise adding a rule along the lines of “All decisions affecting the community and its members as a whole must be backed by a public vote.” This is something that could have prevented this whole disaster in the first place.

        Which is why encourage the Team to make especially this Change. Like I said in the other Comment.

        So while I say the admin of "the page" can do with their page as they like (assuming there are no other rules in place forbidding them from doing so, either at the community or instance level), I believe that it's everyone's own choice to come, go, leave, or stay.

        Because by setting rules not only for user but for admins/mods as well we could have easily prevented this.

        If you leave people without rules and just hope they act as you and others would like them to, you can be harshly disappointed. Rules are not only there to enforce behavior but also to provide guidelines.

    • I just saw your update. Sorry you're having a rough time. I hope your struggles lessen and feel free to reach out if you need support. Even if I can't do anything directly, I'll do my best to wrangle up something for you.

    • "All decisions affecting the community and its members as a whole must be backed by a public vote."

      Is there a way on Lemmy to distinguish who is or isn't a community member? Is there a way to prevent me from rigging votes with a bot army or a group of bad actors?

      • I've been thinking recently about chain of trust algorithms and decentralized moderation and am considering making a bot that functions a bit like fediseer but designed more for individual users where people can be vouched for by other users. Ideally you end up with a network where trust is generated pseudo automatically based on interactions between users and could have reports be used to gauge whether a post should be removed based on the trust level of the people making the reports vs the person getting reported. It wouldn't necessarily be a perfect system but I feel like there would be a lot of upsides to it, and could hopefully lead to mods/admins only needing to remove the most egregious stuff but anything more borderline could be handled via community consensus. (The main issue is lurkers would get ignored with this, but idk if there's a great way to avoid something like that happening tbh)

        My main issue atm is how to do vouching without it being too annoying for people to keep up with. Not every instance enables downvotes, plus upvote/downvote totals in general aren't necessarily reflective of someone's trustworthiness. I'm thinking maybe it can be based on interactions, where replies to posts/comments can be ranked by a sentiment analysis model and then that positive/negative number can be used? I still don't think that's a perfect solution or anything but it would probably be a decent starting point.

        If trust decays over time as well then it rewards more active members somewhat, and means that it's a lot harder to build up a bot swarm. If you wanted any significant number of accounts you'd have to have them all posting at around the same time which would be a lot more obvious an activity spike.

        Idk, this was a wall of text lol, but it's something I've been considering for a while and whenever this sort of drama pops up it makes me want to work on implementing something.

      • I haven't read the response to you quite yet (though skimmed, and saw some cool words I like), but IME, not really/not as well as you might like.

        I know some instances (well, only one I know of - the instance I'm at) have a voting system that hinges around instance membership and declaration by post. It's not perfect, but it gets around the more obvious stuff (bot instances - if you're not a sh.it.head, it doesn't count; admins can refer to unusual patterns in registration around vote time if something seems amiss, etc.)

        But in that case, it's about decisions at an instance level. In this case, it's a little trickier. I don't know if people want the vote to be blahaj users only (though I support that), or if admins are interested in facilitating that/watching for signs of obvious screwiness.

        It's a tricky proposal to ensure it's 100% fair and resistant to manipulation, though I'm sure there's a way to do it. Still think it's important to attempt, though.

      • As far as I know, yes. There is some sort of trace from where the Upvotes came. But I'm not deep into Lemmy-Tech so I don't know much.

    • Good luck!

  • I have a few suckers really nice people who volunteered for modding along with me.

    r those the people I mentioned in my post or r there even more?

    I didn't think this would take off!

    yeh the community has been specially active today to make sure the new 196 grows apparently X3 I knew thatd happen the moment I saw the migration post in the old 196 tho, I love this community :3

    • r those the people I mentioned in my post or r there even more?

      Yep, yours and more. I'm vetting people that chimed in and am pretty sure my wife thinks I've finally gone mad.

  • I'm a bit late on the wagon, but if you're still in need of mods, I would gladly help curate this community and do my best to maintain onehundredninetysix as we know it ^^

  • Hello, i wouldn't mind modding 196 along with you all. However i am not trans, so i may not be the best choice.

    In any way, thanks for creating this and good luck with it 🤠

97 comments